A completely new way to increase music practice effectiveness. The Musician's Practice Log helps a player put in more time on a regular basis, and improves the way that time is used. Best of all, it only takes five minutes a day to log in the information that gives each player a clear picture of his strengths and weaknesses. As a result, valuable insight is gained and improvement is inevitable. Music practicing is turned into a joyful skill instead of a sometimes happy accident.
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"The Musician's Practice Log" is part of a well-thought-out system, and anyone can benefit from using it. -- Tom Heimberg, Strings Magazine, Feb/March, 2001
About the Author
Burton Kaplan is Director of Magic Mountain Music Farm in upper New York State where for 20 years he has conducted Practice Marathon Retreats for musicians. He is Professor of Violin and Viola at The Manhattan School of Music and New York University and Director of Performance Power, an organization dedicated to teaching a system for harnessing and integrating the powers of mind, body, and spirit in the practice room and on the stage. In these capacities, he has influenced the growth of several thousand pre-professional and professional musicians.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Organize your Practice!,
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This review is from: Musician's Practice Log (Paperback)
This "Practice Log" is the best thing to happen to my guitar practice time in years! By sitting down and planning your daily practice a week in advance, you set yourself up for a much more orderly practice time.
Yes, you could create a log for yourself. However, I bet that you would not think of all the little extras that are included in this one. One of those little extras is a laminated sheet to plan your week (on one side) and your next day (on the flip side) of practice. I suggest that you use permanent markers for things that do not change often (erase with rubbing alcohol) and use non-permanent markers for the things that change often (erase with water). That has worked best for me with less mess. The graphs that you generate in the back of the log tell it all. If you are not putting in the time for practice, there it is in black and white. YOU see it and YOU know why you are not advancing as you might want. There is just something about graphing it out that makes it more obvious where the problems are. Speaking of which, there are sections to make note of what you feel your weak areas are and what your strong areas are. If you are working with an instructor, this information could be of use to them. If you are "self-teaching," it certainly tells you where you need to focus your future practice! The instructions explain how to use the log in simple terms. This is a "tool" that would be useful to the beginner all the way to an advanced player. There are sections for you to "reflect" upon your practice over the past week/month/etc. There are also sections to make notes on ways that you think of to improve your practice or find more time for practice. It will take you a week or two to get used to the system, but it is worth it. I saw significant improvement in my time management when I began using the log. It would have gotten five stars instead of four if there were better goal-setting sections. Goals are implied by the material that you are scheduling into your practice, but I think that a section with weekly/monthly/yearly goals would be helpful. On the other hand, it is nice to have that separate since you may have a two-year or three-year goal for your musicianship as well, and each log book holds only 16 weeks of data. Having these goals written out separately may work out better. Besides you can print your goals out in big red letters and put them on the wall in your practice area to always keep them in sight! It is my humble opinion that you need daily/weekly/yearly/and long-term goals in order to stay motivated. By the way, I use these logs for guitar practice, but I don't see any reason that they could not be applied to piano, voice, or any instrument. You owe it to yourself to at least try one. It may work for you too! Besides, it is an inexpensive experiment and you may just find that you also enjoy using them. Roadhouse Blue
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
huge practice help,
By
This review is from: Musician's Practice Log (Paperback)
I had no idea just how much being able to keep a log of my violin practice times would help me! This book had everything to do with transforming my practices from erratic sessions into consistent (and constant) organized work.
I'm proud to say I've been very succesful in all my musical endeavors as of late. I can't live without this book now!
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
effective!,
By
This review is from: Musician's Practice Log (Paperback)
I've spent the summer following the directions and advice in this practice log book, and I've seen incredible improvement in my playing and performances when I had thought I'd reached my capacity as a musician. It's given me a great deal of optimism and excitement towards my practicing that I haven't felt in years.
To give you an idea of what's in this book... there's 15 pages at the beginning that includes introductions, directions on how to fill in the log, the daily practice organizer and time management sheet, then how to analyze your practicing, how to fill in the graph pages, the diary of achievement, and summaries on daily, weekly and monthly improvement. Then there's 16 weeks of log (the only drawback in my opinion, it should have more weeks... but 16 weeks generally covers 1 college semester if that's your where you're at). Then towards back there's a few pages for drawing in practice time graphs, a time management profile, diary of ideas, monthly reflections on how you spend your practice time, more graphs on how you feel about your practice time, more diary of ideas, more monthly reflections, technique achievement summary, repertoire achievement summary, and a record of performances. At the very back of the book there's a couple of pages called "Guide to Types of Practicing" with a few step-by-step strategies for how to achieve a certain practicing goal. It's brief, but helpful when you're not sure what to do next because you don't have your teacher sitting right there next to you telling what you should do next. The book also includes a laminated sheet. One side is the "Daily practice organizer" and the other is "Practice Time Management." It's a bit overwhelming to have so many charts and graphs to fill out at the back of the book when you're under a deadline to learn new pieces, so this helps keep track of things quickly so at the end of the week you can spend a few minutes to fill in the charts in the book. It's really helped me achieve my goals faster (and better) and I'm recommending it to all of my students.
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